A recent review of Zion:
Jam-packed
with local color, Dayne Sherman strives to continue the tradition of
William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and other writers who rooted their human
dramas in the soil of rural America. Zion paints a vivid picture of the
rural South of another era. Sherman shows readers the dark side of
rural southern life: the small town corruption and cronyism, the racism,
and the religious hypocrisy, but, thankfully, he does not stop there.
Nobility is there too, and that is one of this novel's strengths. It
avoids the extremes of demonizing the rural southerners (a popular
pastime these days) and excessive romanticizing of the "good old days."
Not all of his "bumpkins" are stupid. Tom, his main character, is a
self-educated scholar even though his intelligence might not be obvious
to outside observers. (My great-grandfather was that kind of rural
intellectual. He was a mailman and subsistence farmer, but he read
history books for fun.) I confess it took me a couple of chapters to
really warm up to the characters, but once the story started moving, it
was worth the wait. --Dr. Timothy D. Wise

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Dayne ShermanOctober 30, 2014I'm excited. Today is the release date for Zion, my Louisiana mystery novel. Seven year's work now in print. And it's free for three days as an ebook. Please download it, read, and let me know what you think. Sharing is appreciated.

Just click below: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OWN9S5Y/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_IDzuub0M6B8EYAbout the Book: From Dayne Sherman, the critically-acclaimed author of Welcome to the
Fallen Paradise, comes a gothic treatment of the American South: a
hard-charging depiction of religion, family, friendship, deception, and
evil. Zion is a mystery set in the rural South, the story of a war
fought over the killing of hardwoods in Baxter Parish, Louisiana. The
tale begins in 1964 and ends a decade later, but the Hardin family,
faithful members of Little Zion Methodist Church, will carry the scars
for life.
This edition of Zion includes a Reader's Guide for Book Clubs and Author Q and A.
Praise for Dayne Sherman and his work:
“Dayne Sherman writes like I wish I could if I was still young
enough to change.” --Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Jerry
Lee Lewis: His Own Story
“Sherman’s promising debut chronicles a young man’s thorny return to
his Louisiana hometown… Sherman brilliantly reunites a land with its
own set of vicious rules with a native of that land who, as a changed
man, simply wants peace. Weaving his way through a series of complex
characters and a terrain fertilized with a proud but bloody history,
Sherman tells a spirited and engaging tale.” --Publishers Weekly
“Zion begins ballistic, turns tectonic and ends gothic. The people
of this fraught Louisiana town suffer both the shifts of history and the
tribulations of their pasts. In Sherman’s dark vision, wood kin burn
and kin make hay, setting these troubled characters searching in a
spiritual, and sometimes literal, wilderness to find and make right what
they can. Get ready for a thrill ride that slams into modernity with
Old Testament inevitability.” --Tim Parrish, author of Fear and What
Follows & The JumperThanks for reading.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Seven years ago I was chatting with one
of my distant cousins on the corner of North Magnolia and West Thomas in
Hammond. Many readers will know the location as PJ’s Coffee, a place where I
have written large sections of my books.

On this particular day I was given a
great gift, the tale of a local conflict fought between hunters and a timber
company. The timber company was killing hardwoods to make room for more
valuable pine trees, and the local men used fire to even the score, burning
hundreds of acres of young pines to protest the destruction of good hunting
land.

I went home and wrote 40 pages in a
day or two, caught up in the spirit of a tale that I turned into fiction,
setting it in “Baxter Parish,” a region all my own. Though it only took a few
days to write the first section of my novel titled Zion, named for a little community surrounding Little Zion
Methodist Church, it took seven years to write the rest of the book and to give the story adequate justice.

The key to writing is finishing a
project. I never gave up on the long and complex mystery novel, and now I am
proud that it will soon be available to readers.

Seven years ago I couldn’t have
known that there would be a hotly contested marshal’s race in the 7th Ward. One
of my main characters is Donald Brownlow, the marshal, and a decent guide for
any of the candidates vying for the position on November 4. Some early readers
have sent questions about the strange office of the marshal in my book. I tell
them to drive down a street in South Tangipahoa, and let me know if there are
more yard signs advertising candidates than people. We do have a marshal, and
plenty of folks want to win the race.

There is no place more interesting
as a subject than Tangipahoa Parish, a place so dangerous it was once called
“Bloody Tangipahoa.”

I tend to think the stress and strain
of the area is enormous, the transitory nature of a place near two interstates,
the “Crosshairs of the South,” as I call it. This past week there was a
horrifying story of a woman trying to sell her ten-year-old daughter to
strangers at a gas station near I-55. You can’t make up stories like this.

All of the horror aside, our region
is the richest place on earth for a fiction writer. You can bet on it.

I write to meet readers. I’d like to
invite my readers to the national book launch for Zion, my latest novel, on October 30. The event will be held at the Hammond Regional Arts Center, 217 E. Thomas St. There will be a signing and reading
from 4-6:30 PM. I'll read from 5:30-6 PM, and we’ll be done in time for the
Saints game. Come and go as you please. Books will be available for purchase.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

On Tuesday, September 23, our
school-aged son was given a commonly prescribed medication by his physician. My
wife attempted to get the pharmacy to fill it. We were shocked and horrified to
find that it was rejected by our health insurance: Office of Group Benefits HMO
Plan through BlueCross, a health insurance plan for Louisiana public employees.

For almost 16 years I have been a
member of OGB, and my wife, a teacher, has been a member for 25 years. This is
the second rejection we have received this year through MedImpact. Rejecting my medicine is one thing, but rejecting
our son's is another. We have never seen anything like this in our years with
OGB.

You will recall that OGB was privatized
under Gov. Bobby Jindal, and nearly all of the $500,000,000 trust fund has been
stolen. Soon, all money dedicated to funding state workers’ insurance will be
gone. The money was pilfered by Jindal in an effort to fill holes in his
economically disastrous state budget. But this will mean 230,000 Louisiana citizens
are about to lose all semblances of health coverage on January 1.

Earlier on Tuesday, the former
Health and Hospitals head, Bruce Greenstein, was indicted, and the state
attorney general declared the new state health insurance changes illegal through
an opinion solicited by Rep. John Bel Edwards of Amite. I thought this might
stop the train wreck.

But later in the day I had to fight
tooth and nail to get our child’s medicine. I had to contact state
representatives and the media. We were finally able to get the meds filled on
Friday afternoon. I wasn’t looking for a freebie. We pay hundreds of dollars a
month for health insurance, have co-pays for everything, and we paid $55 for the
prescription. We just wanted the doctor-prescribed medication. Not the
insurance-mandated meds.

Most employees and retirees will not
be so lucky. Louisiana state employees and retirees need to understand one
fact. If all of the proposed OGB changes go through as Gov. Jindal plans, they
are effectively uninsured. Health coverage is over, and it will not be coming
back.

Sure, Kristy Nichols, Jindal’s
spokesperson, says the OGB trust fund was too big (Insanity!), that they are
“right-sizing” the insurance plans (Destroying them!), and they’re now offering
better options called Pelican HRA 1000, Pelican HSA 775, Magnolia Local, and
other names worthy of George Orwell’s 1984.
According to Nichols, the new plans will be pure utopia. But when an OGB member
gets a letter from MedImpact of San Diego, California, a cold memo rejecting a
medication prescribed by a doctor here in Louisiana, let’s call it what it is:
a “death panel” letter.

As one person put it, “Bobbycare” is
health care without any care at all. How true.

While our governor flits from Iowa
to New Hampshire playing presidential candidate, a delusional quest to anyone
but himself, Louisiana goes the way of Rome on fire, burning, burning, burning.
Jindal is like a hummingbird on crystal meth. The wings are moving at a
blinding pace, but the overall flight is completely doomed.

I have three questions about the OGB privatization and the missing half billion dollars: Who will go to prison for
stealing state funds through a scheme worthy of a bank heist? Will the FBI
investigate the theft of public money? And will the legislators stop the train
wreck?

Let’s all hope and pray that the
FBI, the courts, or the Louisiana Legislature will prevent Jindal from
destroying one more area of Louisiana that worked before he came into office:
the Office of Group Benefits.

Dayne Sherman Bio/Contact

Zion, my new Louisiana mystery novel, is out on Oct. 30, 2014. Welcome to the Fallen Paradise, my first novel, will be released as a 10th Anniversary edition soon.
I work as a professor of library science in Louisiana. I am interested in Southern politics, education, folklore, and religion.
Follow me here:
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Note: This blog includes my personal views, and it does not in any way reflect the views of my current or past employers.
E-mail me: daynesherman {AT} GMAIL DOT com